Procedural Lockpicking Revisited

A few years back I offered an idea of a way to make lockpicking more engaging and interesting for players.  You can go back and read that post here.  The problem was some of the things I say in the post (like traps at certain points in the flow chart) make it so locks would have to be designed individually, like mini-dungeons.  Way too much work for it to be used by me.  Zak posted a simpler method of guessing using dice and Arkhein did something as well using cards.

Both are sharp mini-game solutions to the problem of needing to make locks.  Unfortunately they don't allow for something else I'd like in a solution, a way that players can get to know locks and feel like they are gaining expertise, not just their characters through abstract level bonuses.  Today I offer another attempt at it.

First, if we limit the number of actions involved to 3 (I'll use Bump, Probe, and Rake) and limit the "tumblers" of each lock to 3, and even further, say that no action is ever used in a row, then we can whittle down the possibilities to something more manageable and discoverable.  If I'm not mistaken the possibilities for these constraints with actions ABC should be:

1. ABA
2. ABC
3. ACA
4. ACB
5. BAB
6. BAC
7. BCA
8. BCB
9. CAB
10. CAC
11. CBA
12. CBC

Now, if we limit the types of locks players encounter we can roll on that table to assign these combinations to give our different campaigns different lock solutions. So you might end up with something like this:

1. Tin          CAC
2. Copper   ABA
3. Brass      BAB
4. Iron        CBC
5. Steel       CAB
6. Strange  ACB

Strange locks are anything weird: crystal, organic, mythril.

The procedure to pick a lock is pretty simple, you try an action and if you get it wrong the lock gets stiff, letting you know that.  If your second attempt is correct you get to go on to the next tumbler.  If your second guess is also wrong the lock jams and will have to be smashed off.  Here is a handout you can use to record the lock solutions for your world and give to players to record their guesses:

As you can see, I've decided that each lock type will have certain number of hit points representing durability; how much damage you have to do to just break them off. I left the action names blank so you can put in what you want (I suppose I should have done the same for the lock types).

The challenge here is to balance the complexity a player will have to encounter in trying to pick a lock and the diversity of locks available in the world.  This depends a lot on how many locks you have in your dungeons and how lucky players get.  They might figure out Tin locks the first time they encounter them and know them ever after.  But they might not.  I think I'll have to just playtest this and see how it works.

I should probably leave it at that until I try it out but I have a few more ideas.

Modifiers could increase lock diversity without increasing the complexity of solutions too much.  Here's what I was thinking:

Lock Modifiers

1. Cracked – more forgiving, first step, any action works
2. Worn – more forgiving, first jam doesn't happen
3. Normal
4. Banded – Twice as many hit points required to smash it off
5. Corroded – less forgiving, wrong action goes straight to Jam
6. Spiked – less forgiving, each wrong action results in 1hp damage to the lock picker

More Locks
Because there are 12 possibile solutions on our chart you could also add 6 more types of locks of just duplicate the default 6 but call them Goblin locks (goblin tin, goblin brass, etc) or Dwarvish locks or whatever.

Character Level
This system doesn't take into account levels at all, you might assign levels to locks by rolling a d10. So, for instance, giving you a 7th level iron lock.  You might assigning penalties and bonuses from the modifiers chart like, locks above the picker's level act as if they are corroded or locks below your level act as if they are worn.  But that might get a bit fiddly.

I like Zak's suggestion that every level you get one get out of a jam free card, but only one.  That might be simpler.  Again I'll have to try this out and see how fast the lock types get solved.  If half the types are still a mystery at 5th level then level might not even be much of an issue-- actual player knowledge standing in for the assumed character's skill increases.

Procedural Lockpicking

Arkhein asked how to make lockpicking interesting.  Here's my attempt:

Your thief knows four ways to manipulate locks:

• Bump
• Probe
• Rake
• Twist

And that's it.  She knows the wrong actions might Jam the lock permanently preventing it from being picked or opened with a key.  She also knows some locks have a Trap with bad things happening to those that set it off by failing to pick properly.

But maybe she also knows you never Bump a Dwarven lock, ever.  And you never start a brass lock with a Twist.  And maybe as she gains experience (levels) she can Bump and still recompose herself when she realizes that was the wrong thing to do.

In this picture, a correct choice will move along the grey track to the next choice.  A wrong choice will result in the lock feeling stiff (a warning) and the thief can either choose the correct action from there or face the consequences.

A DM might have a whole folder full of locks-- different difficulties, different makes. The players would not see these images, but hear a description-- "It is a heavy brass lock, with a D inscribed on it."


Update: I got all excited this morning because I woke up with what I thought was a solution to generating these easily and then I realized Zak had already proposed it in his comment. Anyway, yeah, assign a number to each of the lockpicking verbs, the "moves," roll 3d4 and the results tell you which the thief has to use.  Use dice in a color progression and you know the order the lock requires them in:

So, for that roll, starting from white we get Rake, Probe, Bump, Bump.  But that just gives us a very simple (and unforgiving) lock that assumes it jams if the thief uses the wrong verb.  To complicate this, it seems like it depends on how common you want traps to be.  On a wrong move by the player, we might then roll a 1d6 and a 5=jammed, a 6=trapped, and the other numbers indicate a move to avoid jamming: "Oh, she was supposed to Bump and didn't, now she can salvage this attempt with a Rake otherwise it Jams."

But, all this fiddling is not getting us much for the player above just rolling a 25 on d%, so it would be essential that you as DM:

• Have locks of certain types, that players can gain expertise on.  This is contradictory to our method of generation, but if you say that all brass locks start with Probe, you could then just randomly determine the other tumblers for that lock.
•  Give some kind of advantages with level, that would allow for some skill at the game.  Like "one free get out of a Jam," or "Reveal the move on one tumbler in any lock."

Zombiecowboy asked about Bump and Rake.  The verbs here are just abstractions, but abstractions that are conceivably related to lockpicking so you can hang your roleplaying on them (those two provisions bulletpointed above.  You could use any verbs that would help you do this in your world.  I actually needed a fourth verb and just looked at the lockpicking page on Wikipedia to find "rake." But Pry, Tap, and Spin could work just as well.